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John Ruskin 
The Voice of the New Age 



John Ruskin 
The Voice of the New Age 






Jt S. MONTGOMERY 



t 



Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 
New York: Eaton and Mains 



Copyright^ igo2, 

by 
Jennings and Pye 









THE LlftRA^Y OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two CoPlfai ftscsivED 

OCT: S ?ao? 

COPVWtQHT ENTITY 

CtA^S ^ XXa Mo. 
COPY 3, 



IN the concrete we are Christian, but in 
the realm of the abstract we are part in- 
fidel. The story of some simple life 
comes to us in the measure of an unequaled 
charm. To the mind are presented three 
objects — love, religion, and patriotism. Give 
them flesh, and we understand. Real men 
with real voices and real hearts make an 
earthly scene which is attractive. Philos- 
ophy can explain the song-bird; but explana- 
tion is not inspiration. The latter we must 
have. The bird in the overhanging bough 
moves us as it pours forth a throat filled with 
liquid song. But the theory of music is a 
bald conclusion. The history of flowers, 
rocks, and stars can never compete with the 
story of some great heart. The day would 
be poor indeed were it not for models and 

5 



6 John Ruskin 

master — uplifted and illuminated. The 
world is filled with gifts good and perfect, 
but the richest products of any age are con- 
science, love, and ideals. The world very 
justly appreciates a Newton, whose mind 
stepped from star to star and from system 
to system, and a Bacon, whose great genius 
could untwist the unseen elements of the 
world-house; but John Ruskin, ethical 
teacher, prophet, and seer, inspires great 
strength, by which the higher goodness is 
made attainable. 

God not only spoke once, but he is speak- 
ing still. Inspiration is continuous. God's 
unfolding truth journeys with man; he is 
ever breathing into the breast of some 
prophet his providences and purposes. A 
long time ago he said unto one, "Go!" and 
he goeth. And at the approach of the foot- 
step of Abraham the growing pathway 
widened into a highway of righteousness. 
The voice said again, "Come !" and he com- 



John Ruskin 7 

eth ; and lo ! that son of Tarsus, whose tunic 
was stained with a brother's blood, became 
a penitent beneath the Syrian sky. Upon 
the world's horizon have ever stood prophets. 
They leaned not upon the accidents of life; 
they were God-appointed. They worshiped 
not at the perishable shrines of glory, gold, 
or greatness. God exalted them; and 
through such master minds all progress is 
wrought. This is God's way. 

To the list of earth's immortals, unto 
whom human life and welfare were sacred, 
we hasten to add the name 6i John Ruskin. 
Epoch-making men in any century are rare 
and infrequent creations. It is only given 
to a few to date new eras for themselves. 
The note of the prophet is not a common 
endowment. To change the current of social 
and religious life and throw it into untried 
channels is no easy task. Society has ever 
made bold strikes to extricate itself by the 
discipline of policy. But John Ruskin stands 



^ 



8 John Ruskin 

apart. He brings a divine touch to every 
impulse of the human heart. Much that is 
deepest in human faculty and finest in hu- 
man feeling are responding to his precept 
and example. He has rolled the world upon 
the heart, and the ministry of the heart upon 
the world. Thus he disowned a religion 
engendered of self. He bent his religion to 
human need, and angels knew him as a 
brother. 

John Ruskin preached his first sermon 
when a lad of three. 'Teople,'' said the tot, 
''be good. If you are good, God will love 
you. If you are not good, God will not love 
you. People, be good.'' He never changed 
his message. Like Lindsley, the novelist, 
and Browning, the poet, when first impres- 
sions began to nibble at the mind, John 
Ruskin foreshadowed his life purpose. He 
preached. Let not our estimate of him be 
too exclusive. When he saw colors in sweet 
harmony splashed upon the canvas, or in- 



John Ruskin 9 

genious scars carved in marble, or nature 
clothed in loveliness, he knew it, and called 
them beautiful. But he did not stop in the 
empire of form and feature. These, alone, 
were misshapen dwarfs. They were like 
lowering clouds upon his brow. Here is 
where Nireus camped. In Ruskin's score 
and a half volumes the view that he was 
only an art critic and a lover of nature is 
put to flight. Primarily he is moralist — 
a teacher of ethical and religious truth. He 
ever felt the mighty substance of eternity 
and the feverish shadow of time. Among 
the mellow tints of human life he saw the 
hovering shadows over all. He planted his 
feet on bed-rock, and, with his brow in the 
skies, by his marvelous gifts and by his mor- 
tal failings, he followed his bent — v/hich was 
preacher. As prophet and man ''He cared 
for nature more than art; for human kind 
more than nature ; for the glory of God most 
of all.^' In art alone his soul rebelled and 



lo John Ruskin 

refused to abide. That eminent Christian 
scholar, Dr. Waldstein, says: "Ruskin's 
strongest points and greatest achievements 
are not to be found in the domain of art. 
Art, as such, does not respond to the bent 
of his natural mind.'' He travels through 
nature and art. He loves the delights of 
the passage, but he leads on to the sanc- 
tuary. Humanity is the first and the last 
of his sermon. He stays in the oratory of 
the soul. Frederick Harrison instructs us. 
He says : "John Ruskin began by preaching 
to us a higher sense of art in order to lead 
us up to a truer understanding of morality, 
industry, religion, and humanity.'' 

True, "art'' was his text; but right living 
was his message. He preached as a child 
of the noon, for his soul was as the summer 
skies. His French critics follow in the pea- 
cock's train, whose ideas of art and the beau- 
tiful are as the wandering shades of watered 
silk. They bow at the altar, "Art for art's 



John Ruskin ii 

sake/' It IS not strange that the French 
school should quarter their appreciation of 
this man and mock at his ideals. They 
lived, by word and action, that ''art is its 
own religion, its own morality, and we want 
neither Bible nor missal to show us how to 
paint/' When Tennyson's eyes fell upon 
these words, he blurted out with surface 
bluntness, "That is the road to hell/' 
^'Agreed," Ruskin would have answered. 
Within his bosom's core he was Puritan, 
though he would have disowned the brand. 
He was obstinate, and dared the vice of 
honesty. Art, ethics, and religion were in 
immeasurable momentum in this gifted man. 
In each realm he is an ambassador of true 
life. In the domain of character he labors. 
Here he exhales the odor of sanctity. He 
never imperils the soul's throne. In the 
first volume of "Modern Painters" he wrote, 
"Art has for its business to praise God." 
In the last volume he said, "Art is the ex- 



12 John Ruskin 

pression of delight in God's work." A good 
work has been done when the ignorant 
mouth has been shut. De la Sizerrane, in 
a fret, cries, ''Passionate love of nature was 
Ruskin's Alpha and Omega." Not so. 
Man's chief end is to glorify God and to 
enjoy him forever, was his shorter cate- 
chism. Other than this, to him all paintings 
were daubs and nature a riddle. In his 
world beautiful was the perfect flowering 
of all life; life fragrant, life expanded into 
great heart, full of love and blessed. In this 
teaching were the essences which turn our 
little worlds into growing gardens of un- 
speakable gifts. 

Was he orthodox? At times he repels 
us, and we revolt. The trouble is, he applies 
the truth with such level and impartial 
sweep that he stuns; dreadfully unanswer- 
able; yet he touches the Christian ideal at 
every point. Critics have chased him with 
unsparing tread because he is too absolutely 



John Ruskin 13 

Christian ; he spares not ; he bites too deep ; 
he simply strips the truth of all artificial- 
ities. To him the Sermon on the Mount is 
real. He seeks to take it away from the 
mere jugglers, and hand it over to the mul- 
titudes, that it may become a common rule 
of conduct and a simple hope of heaven. 
To many the ethics of this greatest sermon 
is revolutionary. For the Church we can 
not make a great claim that it is attempting 
to apply them to public and private life. 
Too often there is a shrinking from the 
labels "foohsh," '^Utopian," "fanatical." 
Writes an agnostic of to-day of Ruskin, 
''He had hold of the gospel." In the every- 
day application of the gospel Ruskin was 
disquieting, relentless, and frightfully ter- 
rifying to the average Christian. His whole 
aim was simply to carry out into the routine 
of daily life the truths that Christians pro- 
fess on Sundays. With him all days were 
holy days, all water was holy water, and 



14 John Ruskin 

all bread was sacrificial bread. Thus he 
caused alienations and conflicts. He kindled 
the wrath of professor and Churchman. 
They turned up perplexingly angular. But 
often it is, to live in peace with God we must 
live in enmity of man. All the while Rus- 
kin's sanity was delightful. The simple 
teaching of Jesus was his plea. He stood 
apart from theologic dye-stuff, declaring that 
sweet simplicity was the terminal point of 
all progress. If the sparrow is glad and 
the lily happy, he wondered why man went 
about the earth mourning and weeping. 

As the present-day progress of discoveries 
and inventions is witnessed, we are amazed 
that the world journeyed so many long cen- 
turies without them. Yet we have just 
reason to be more deeply surprised at a 
Christendom which has traveled nigh a score 
of centuries without learning that plain 
Christianity is the life of Jesus. There are 
numerous questions relating to credal state- 



John Ruskin 15 

ment about which we shall never know the 
Master's mind. Many intellectual inquiries 
he passed by. But the example he set and 
the precepts he taught admit of no doubt. 
He taught that man was the daily recipient 
of the treasury of mercy ; if hungry, thirsty, 
or guilty he was to be sought as guest to 
the King's feast, and as child of hope the 
Rock of his confidence is ever sure. While 
clutching at the horn of his danger, stupidly 
deaf, taking note of nothing good, and 
catching at the bright decoys of sin, the 
Father's house is always open. In his em- 
phasis of practical Christianity Ruskin 
paints a great streak in the coming dawn. 
Life! life! is the keyword of his doctrine, 
and shall never crumber to the sand. It is 
the supreme actuality of the universe and 
the nourishing bread of heaven. It trans- 
forms earth, sky, and water into flowers, 
trees, buds, and blossoms. So it is, Jesus 
flings it into souls and bids them live. In 



i6 John Ruskin 

the fabric of character it is the one great 
word. In its vocabulary there are none 
greater. 'Tis the dominating note of the 
whole Bible. Man can not float while com- 
mon sense is swamped. The glory of the 
Alpine flower is safe. It sends its search- 
ing roots away down deep into the very heart 
of the flaky rock, and lays hold of the secret 
place in the hidden cleft. Thus it lives. It 
is the Christ-life that saves man; life un- 
fettered that begets the creature's nobility. 
But not only so. In a world where the 
oarsman must pull or perish, where every 
peril has a gaping gate and every creature 
is the pensioner of God, man must be his 
brother's savior. This is Ruskin. He 
flamed forth this mighty conviction. He 
struck ^'between the joints of the harness." 
Sage-life he possessed; a ponderous endur- 
ance of decision. He was all oak. Amid 
the hurricanes of the critics, he was like a 
promontory in might. He breasted criti- 



John Ruskin 17 

cisms as arrows glance from adamant. To 
him the path of service was the path to 
glory. His ideals were not too high nor his 
claims too great. While his numerous con- 
temporaries, of the materialistic sort, were 
quibbling about the dust of man and the 
*'rib'' of woman, our prophet was pleading 
for *'man — man, the favorite of God." A 
humble shoemaker listened one day for the 
footfall of Christ. He had dreamed that the 
Master would visit him that day. All 
through its hours the poor workman watched 
and waited. In the interim he found time 
to relieve the distress of an aged man, a sick 
woman, and a cripple boy. At evening time, 
weary and sick at heart, he fell upon his 
knees, and expressed disappointment that 
the Christ had not made his promised visit, 
and the voice answered, "Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these, 
thy brethren, ye have done it unto me.'' 

Arise ; let us go. Make every added oppor- 
2 



i8 John Ruskin 

tunity and every increasing gift a pledge to 
duty and greater obligation. May there be 
seen, in growing outlines, the image of 
Christ ! — even as Dante, scaling terrace after 
terrace of 'Turgatorio,'' beheld in raptur- 
ous joy the growing form of his beloved 
Beatrice. Ruskin's dictum is: ^Tut your 
creed into your deed. Character is greater 
than catechism." 

Ruskin's *'Unto this Last,'' two-score 
years ago, set the boasting political econ- 
omists howling. He was guilty of a daring 
intrusion. In Ruskin's mix, ethics and 
aesthetics became one lump. 'Tis the old 
cry. Let the preacher stick to the gospel, as 
the cobbler does to his last. This is an easy 
retort. To complicate matters is a galling 
violation, you know. Ethics and aesthetics 
are delegated to live apart, declared the 
critics. John Ruskin taught that they are 
inseparable and are twisted around the ribs 
of the globe. The one must be grafted onto 



John Ruskin 19 

the strength of the other. By ethical con- 
sideration he sought to leaven the lump of 
political economy by asking how the people 
lived. To him the wealth of humanity was 
the only real riches of life. With him re- 
ligion was a strange commodity; the more 
you send away, the more you have at home. 
When the critics were pursuing him, like 
hounds chasing a wild hare, with quick 
bound and hot breath, Ruskin, like the 
Prophet of Carmel, without toil or travail, 
said: ''There is no wealth but life; life, in- 
cluding all the powers of love, of joy, of ad- 
miration. That country is the richest which 
nourishes the greatest number of noble and 
happy beings." But the economists regarded 
man as ratchet, wheel, or screw in some in- 
human machine. Scanning the surface of 
life, they counted the rich the only happy; 
wealth as the compensating peace which 
never faileth to gladden man in his afflic- 
tions. Ruskin seeks to draw the angel out 



20 John Ruskin 

of man by wholesome influences, unselfish 
service, by lifting him, and by justice. True 
life was not a question of coin or doctrinal 
statement. These worshipers were of the 
outer-court sort. Character is moral, and not 
ceremonial; is daily practice based on daily 
precept. He stirred the pulse of these hu- 
man highlands with a truth that is destined 
to weld the pure elements of human life into 
one everlasting harmony. The truth he 
states, says one, is this: "He deliberately 
lays down an ethical standard of conduct 
for the art of political economy, the accept- 
ance of w^hich entirely alters the nature of 
the science." Man is greater than system 
or institution. Conscience and reason must 
be companions. Don't confuse him with 
Tolstoi. The latter is a literalist ; the former 
is sanely practical. Tolstoi is contemplation ; 
Ruskin is now. One is ascetic, and the 
other is hand to hand. In "Unto this Last," 
Ruskin's concluding passage is: "Consider 



John Ruskin 21 

whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury 
would be desired by any of us if we saw 
clearly by our sides the suffering which ac- 
companies it in this world. Luxury is in- 
deed possible in the future — innocent and 
exquisite ; luxury for all ; but luxury at pres- 
ent can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; 
the cruelist man living could not sit at the 
feast, unless he sat blindfolded. Raise the 
veil boldly; face the light." The stroke is 
bold. To raise the veil is the very last thing 
people want to do. The suggestion makes 
panic of thought; it sets truants guessing. 
One long drama is yet to come — the drama 
of man. It takes time for a great idea to 
take color and ripen. In the meantime, 
minds light and childish may laugh at the 
life and pleadings of such a man, and 
prophesy foolish things. In the Ruskinian 
awakening the future has begun to glow. 
Each year bears a deeper shading of his 
thought. In this renaissance swarthy labor 



22 John Ruskin 

and easy opulence shall sit down together, 
and each will claim the right to carry the 
heavier burden. Man, and man alone, is to 
wear the crown jewels. With a divine im- 
pressiveness that shall grow forever shall be 
handed over to the races of men that pris- 
matic conception of earth's greatest philos- 
ophy which first echoed in the ears of the 
wondering multitudes as they were gathered 
about the mountain's base: "Therefore all 
things whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them; for this 
is the law and the prophets." 

And idealist was he ? A brothmaker ? He 
comes from subtle heights to splendid serv- 
ice! In the spacious rooms of his great 
breast the world's strays found hospitality. 
His was a fellowship that is vigorous and 
efficacious. But how shall we explain him? 
A life so wondrously converged asks ques- 
tions. The traveler follows the ''Father of 
Waters" to the little lake in the North, in 



John Ruskin 23 

whose face is reflected the imagery of the 
skies. But its source is not there. It Hes 
far beyond and above in the clouds and 
winds of the heavens, where lie silent the 
rainstorm and the snowfall. True greatness 
so often lies beyond blood and environment. 
It is God-born, and not man-made. John 
Ruskin was born a child of genius and an 
heir to wealth. At the age of twenty-one, as 
author and heir, London parlors and draw- 
ing-rooms were ready to lionize him. The 
moment was critical; but he was high- 
minded. He yearned to see the vision — re- 
fusing the glittering pathways in which the 
rich were vying with each other. The veil 
dropped, and he looked to see. Hencefor- 
ward he was a knight errant of the poor. 
Morning after morning he visited the Lon- 
don docks where men and women were 
crowding the gates. They were weak and 
faint with hunger; their eyes were feverish 
pools of want, and their faces pinched and 



24 John Ruskin 

drawn. Thousands of these honest idlers 
gathered here daily, at an early hour, that 
they might get a job of work, to earn a bit 
of bread for starving wives and mothers and 
crying children. He visited Whitechapel at 
the evening hour, and there saw the motley 
gangs of men, women, and children return- 
ing from their toil, whose daily stint was 
fourteen hours. Here they toiled for the 
beggar's wage, within walls whose every 
pore oozed filth and poison. Here brains 
were made drunken, the blood hot and fever- 
ish. Dwarfed mentally and shriveled phys- 
ically, they soon yielded to some contagion, 
and, dying, they left an enfeebled offspring. 
The human heart must be a companion of 
man's philosophy. Theory must not out- 
race practice. Birds long caged lose the 
power of their wings. 

A cruel deed 
It is, poor bird, to cage thee up 
A prisoner for life, with just a cup 

And box of seed. 



John Ruskin 25 

Man is better than many sparrows, in- 
deed ; but London's poor were sadly like the 
bird in the prison-house — a cage, a cup, and 
a crust. Out West there is a wide, strange 
area where smoke pours out of the porous 
earth, hot water shoots high into the air, 
the fumes of poison cause the brain to reel, 
the soil is spongy and sinks under foot, 
vegetation can not grow, birds come not 
here; hissing sounds are heard which set 
the nerves on edge. Shocked, the traveler 
to this place mutters, with bated breath, 
''Hell is not far away." When Ruskin went 
about old London, sounding its depths, his 
stricken soul mourned, "Hell is close at 
hand.'' Issuing from sepulchers foul and 
fearful, wretched hovels, sweating vats, and 
alleyways as dark as night, he saw the labor- 
ers like unto black shadows — the wreckage 
upon life's sea. May a distinction be made 
here in favor of Dante's hell? In his hell 
only the cruelly wicked suffer; but in Lon- 



26 John Ruskin 

don the poor and innocent wore the crown 
of thorns. 



Work, work, work. 

My labor never flags ; 
And what are its wages ? A bed of straw, 

A crust of bread and rags ; 
A shattered roof, and this naked floor, 

A table, a broken chair, 
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank 

For sometimes falling there. 



While London was thus prison and hos- 
pital, thirstily strained the rich; a ravenous 
greed was gnawing. Like the wide, ex- 
tensive districts of the torrid zone, they 
yielded no kindly nourishment. Justice was 
on the cross. The rich were clutching at the 
poor man's bed of straw to weave it into 
cots of ease. In this hour Ruskin's whole 
being revolted. He clinched a rigid fist, and, 
with justifiable rage, he used two voices — the 
bark of an infuriated dog, and the call to 
the sanctuary. All the time they were glut- 



John Ruskin 27 

ting at their maw and casing their hearts in 
iron. Stuffed with plum pudding, cheeks 
red and beefy, assessors and receivers, and 
the poor in mute submission. 

John Ruskin taught that the obligations 
of wealth and genius are superior. He 
allowed them no release in evergreen pas- 
tures, where they might coo life away in 
indolence and sin. In their unwillingness 
to wear the yoke he salved them not with 
easy words. While they claimed an ex- 
clusive heritage, a latitude denied the com- 
mon stock, an exemption from earth's 
burdens, he stood as champion of human 
justice. He was the warder at the gate- 
way of right. He was more concerned 
about earth's hell than he was about the 
hell that is to come. With him a heaven 
on earth was quite as important as a heaven 
in a world hereafter. The modern novel 
is a remarkable evolution. Its present su- 
premacy is unique. Its beginning was not 



28 John Ruskin 

altogether creditable. In the days of Field- 
ing and Smollett the lords and ladies of 
creation were canonized by the genius 
of the storyteller. To-day the novelist 
makes onslaught on hypocritical condona- 
tion, especially in high places. A number 
of years ago there lived in the public mind 
of our country a great genius. This man 
was cleverly heartless, and wittily wicked. 
By virture of his imperial intellect, he 
claimed the right of indulgence. He re- 
fused to wear the yoke of manhood, and 
scandalized society. In the National de- 
partment of justice, standing before the 
picture of one of New England's famous 
sons, one is reminded of the tragedy of a 
woman's heart. In college he stood at the 
head of his classes. On the night of his 
graduation, he led to the altar one of New 
England's loveHest daughters. Next to God, 
on whom the beautiful maiden stayed her 
soul, was the love she bore him. Heaven 



John Ruskin 29 

smiled upon the union. They returned to 
a palace. Ere long it was changed into a 
drunkard's home. The cheek that once 
blushed as a climbing rose was faded. Sad 
fate had left its carving lines upon her brow. 
Only a few short years she lingered upon 
that verge that divides existence from the 
grave. Here was greatness of genius tak- 
ing exemption from the laws of right 
living. Other centuries have been the 
white man's age, but this one is the age 
of man. The play of human rights is des- 
tined to continue. Ruskin exclaims to the 
ingenious, as well as the humblest son : "Do 
justice and judgment, that 's your Bible 
order ; that 's the service of God — not pray- 
ing and psalm-singing. We are impru- 
dent enough to call our beggings and shout- 
ings, 'Divine service.' Alas ! unless we per- 
form divine service in every willing act 
of life, we never perform it all. The one 
divine work, the one order of service and 



30 John Ruskin 

sacrifice, is to do justice. Do justice to 
your brother; you can do that whether you 
love him or not, and you will come to love 
him. But do justice to him because you 
don't love him, and you will come to 
hate him." This declaration was made to 
an audience of Christians in 1865. His 
word is, money, genius, and talent are to 
;be used for man, and our chief duty among 
our fellows is to prove maxim by precept. 
We are men, and, as such, we owe our- 
selves to all mankind. In the ^'Crown of 
Wild Olives," which is strikingly clear 
and tremendously sane, he assails the mod- 
ern version and practice of Christianity. 
He goes the whole length. He spares not 
the exalted ones in their wretched de- 
formities, though they may be gracefully 
carved and delicately painted. He says, 
"You knock a man into the ditch, and then 
you tell him to remain content in the posi- 
tion in which Providence has placed him." 



John Ruskin 31 

And, again, he says to the Bradford mer- 
chant: "We have indeed a nominal relig- 
ion to which we apply tithes of property 
and sevenths of time; but we have a prac- 
tical and earnest religion to which we de- 
vote nine-tenths of our property and six- 
sevenths of our time. And we dispute a 
great deal about the nominal religion, but 
we are all unanimous about the practical 
religion of which the ruling goddess may 
be best generally described as the 'Goddess 
of Getting On/ " Slightly extravagant ? Is 
he unfaithful to the day in its actual type? 
Dare we, receiving bread, give a stone; 
receiving fish, give a serpent? The core of 
Ruskin's creed is this, that all property and 
all talent are given as sacred trusts. 

He scans the appalling number of hu- 
man foes. He argues the pliancy of the 
soul. 'Tis an old truth, two pictures 
— Marie Antoinette and Joan of Arc. In 
the constant presence of the one, the mind 



32 John Ruskin 

is tinctured with vice and viciousness; by 
the daily look upon the other, the life is 
flavored with unselfishness, purity, and no-^ 
bility. Man is clay, and often it is that en- 
vironment is the potter. Environment is 
weight, or wings to the soul. It makes 
one sodden and mentally stupid, while 
on some, Michael's face, the outer glow is 
only the expression of an inner warmth. 
This is one of Ruskin's supreme claims. 
As noiselessly, but yet as surely as the moth 
frets at the fringes of the purple rose, so 
do the dark, dismal surroundings cause 
creeping paralysis of mind and gnawing 
deadness of nerve, until careless, indifferent 
victims, unmindful of dark and awful pos- 
sibilities, wabble into an oblivious eternity. 
John Ruskin saw these burdened lives, and 
realized their tragic ends. His soul mourned 
the squalor, filth, darkness, and death of 
the tenement district. His soul cried aloud 
to move this mass and mix of human life, 



John Ruskin 33 

and lift the curse from the humblest one. 
We have stood on the shore of old ocean. 
Its majestic independence struck us. How 
placid it seemed as the waves broke in in- 
nocence upon the rocks. We paused on 
the sands. In the fairy chemistry of the 
spattered spray we loved to bathe our face. 
The beauty of the sunlit landscape is the 
offspring of the old sea. The beady foam 
is like strings of pearls in braids of glory. 
No wonder the seagull sleeps upon the 
waves. Splashed into the firmament, how 
fascinating! The sun, the outstretched 
skies, the shadows, the foam, the shells, set 
in the azure blue of the laughing deep, 
form a picture for the envy of painter and 
poet. But come! Listen! What awful 
secrets are hidden in its mighty depths. 
Amid the slime and filth what treasures lie 
buried. How many pallid faces, appeal- 
ing for help and succor, have gone down 
through its seething waves. What a charnel 
3 



34 John Ruskin 

house it is! Could its crystal gates be 
opened and the ghosts come forth, the world 
itself would be teeming with phantoms that 
would unnerve and pall the hearts of men! 
O the hopes, joys, and loves, the things 
precious of mind and heart, the glorious 
argosies of human wealth which have gone 
down because of ''man's inhumanity to man/^ 
Ruskin saw the tragedies of environment. 
His argument is sane. Says he. Let the 
child of good fortune and refinement ex- 
change homes with the child of the tene- 
ment district, and the former will go down 
to shame and ruin, while the latter will 
go up to honor and success. No songster 
comes from the brood of serpents; no 
mellow-throated lark from the nest of the 
carrion bird. His plea is for the simple 
ministrations of beauty to fall on the stressed 
and the distressed. The fact and the power 
of beauty must be recognized. On a sum- 
mer's day we flee from the city to escape 



John Ruskin 35 

the decorations of man, and, in the country, 
we fall into the sweeter enchantments of 
the All-father. For lo! his fields and hill- 
sides are carpeted with green ; the garments 
of tree and shrub throw off perfume; the 
dewdrops sparkle like condensed sunshine; 
the branches follow the grace of the lily's 
stem; the vines are swinging festoons; 
great trees form Gothic arches, and the 
whole woodland is a temple of song. God 
loves the beautiful. We would die were we 
only saints. To enjoy the law of the beau- 
tiful is to be natural. Music is as useful 
as a steam engine. Beauty thrown upon 
wall, canvas, floor, or table is as full of 
utility as the rolling, sparkling trolley. 
Architecture is as valuable as plows and 
steel rails. In a day so excessively com- 
mercial, this truth needs emphasis. Ruskin's 
thought is that a mind stirred to feel the 
proportions of a graceful arch, the beauty 
of a column, or the delicate shadings of 



36 John Ruskin 

line is prepared to appreciate the more ex- 
alted forms of beauty as they may appear. 
Such a one can pass, without effort, from 
the Venus de Milo to the Sistine Madonna, 
from the grandeur of Solomon's temple to 
the infinite worth of the Christ, and listen 
to the truth of eternity as it falls from his 
holy lips. 

While Ruskin was seeking explanations 
of the wretchedness of the poor man's 
home, he visited Sheffield. Here he mingled 
with the workmen in iron and steel. They 
were without models. Minds uninstructed, 
and hands unguided, made menial drudgery 
of labor. Ruskin brought hither his num- 
erous pieces of his magnificent marbles, 
gathered in Greece and Italy; his art treas- 
ures, collected in Florence, Rome, and 
Paris, and, with free hand, distributed 
them among the workmen of the Sheffield 
factories, that after these models they might 
trace the graceful line in the handiwork of 



John Ruskin 37 

their daily toil. A few years passed, and 
the lines and tints of these models were re- 
peated on walls and furniture, and sprinkled 
in home-made carpets and rugs. John 
Ruskin was the father of diffusive art. For 
many long centuries genius carved and 
painted for palace and temple. Hither were 
carried statues, white and lifelike ; paintings, 
rare and rich; tapestries, choice and beauti- 
ful; mosaics, radiant w^ith precious gems. 
But during these long ages, the poor, 
through many centuries, lived in caves of 
clay, with roofs of straw, and floors of mud. 
The common herd, so branded, was de- 
based with an abhorrent ugliness. Unto this 
prophet is due credit for the commencement 
of that era, in which to-day the lowliest 
home of the humblest citizen is blessed by 
the presence of beauty and grace. 

Ruskin's doctrine of money-getting and 
money-spending was bold and courageous 
and revolutionary. Upon the faces of 



38 John Ruskin 

bond, mortgage, and writ were the scars 
of distortion. He believed that money-get- 
ting was the curse of man. He said, with 
Plato, "The citizen must be happy and 
good, but very rich and very good at 
the same time he can not be/' To him the 
rich man's heart sounded like sap-wood. 
He dared impertinent questions. He did 
not ask how much was given in benevolence, 
but how was the money earned. His ques- 
tions were unanswered. On the bold pages 
of "Fors Clavigera," he says: "Dick Tur- 
pin is blamed by some plain-minded per- 
son for consuming the means of other peo- 
ple's living. 'Nay,' says Turpin, to the 
plain-minded person, 'observe how benefi- 
cently and pleasantly I spend whatever I 
get.' 'Yes, sir,' persists the plain-minded 
person ; 'but how do you get it ?' 'The ques- 
tion,' says Dick, 'is insidious and irrele- 
vant.' " Ruskin turns, and charges on 
counterfeited charity : "No man ever became, 



John Ruskin 39 

or can become, largely rich merely by labor 
and economy. • . . Persons desiring to 
be rich, and accumulating riches, always 
hate God, and never fear him; the idol 
they do fear [for many of them are sincerely 
religious] is an imaginary or mind-sculp- 
tured God of their own making, to their own 
liking." They hated him. How could they 
love? To them these exclamations were 
the wild images of a fancy tilted and 
tottering under excessive and ignorant think- 
ing. 'Idiot," read the penny-a-liner; ''in- 
sane," muttered the Oxford teacher; "better 
have a guardian appointed," said the 
Churchman; "fool," scorned the editor. 
Amid these whirligigs of human hurri- 
canes was it true that Ruskin had struck 
the sandbar of folly? Was he duped by 
a blue distance? Was he vainly mocked 
by the irony of events? Was he just under 
the juniper branches, with a clot on his 
brain? Extremist? One-sided? Yes, but 



40 John Ruskin 

intelligently so. Is it not true that such as 
he have lifted the world a little nearer 
heaven, and became the forerunners of 
truths, which are destined to be coexten- 
sive with man ? Extremists have caused the 
pendulum to stop midway in its swing. 
Raleigh, Savonarola, and Cromwell are 
types of such. Had it not been for the ex- 
tremist, the world might to-day be sitting 
on its flat disk, with its feet hanging over 
in the placid waters of a placid ocean. 

Ruskin believed that wealth is a social 
fact; that our plus possessions should be 
applied to another man's need. He was 
ever faithful to this principle. In the first 
years of his manhood, he began tithing his 
income, until, at length, he gave his entire 
fortune in serving his fellowman. He 
opened for the submerged classes libraries, 
clubs, and entertainment halls; purchased 
waste commons, and turned them into 
flower gardens and parks, with birds and 



John Ruskin 41 

splashing fountains. Here the poor women 
might come for a long, hot summer after- 
noon, with crying babes clinging to their 
breast, and get a kiss of God's sun- 
shine and a breath of his fresh air. He 
opened the Chapel of St. John, and brought 
hither his rich paintings for the walls, and 
placed pedestals for his sculptures, and 
turned the little sanctuary into an art gallery, 
and commanded the poor, free of price, to 
come hither seven days in the week and 
enjoy a feast of beauty. Thus he sought to 
dethrone the rule of violence. Repression 
disgraces; reverence ennobles. 

Wealth is a social fact, otherwise it ceases 
to be wealth. A miner, in a desolate moun- 
tain region, discovers a mine of gold or sil- 
ver ; how much better off is he ? He is just as 
poor as he was before, because he is in the 
mountain desert alone. If this statement 
is disputed, let the merchant open up busi- 
ness one hundred miles back in the forest; 



42 John Ruskin 

the professional man, his office on some 
distant island; the manufacture, his shop 
on the prairie wild. The man of fortune is 
rich to-day because he is living where the 
people are, and they alone have made pos- 
sible his wealth. No man has the right to 
do as he pleases with his own. The truth 
is, it is not his own in any such measure. 
A few years ago what a thrill of indigna- 
tion swept over the country when a cele- 
brated financier, on being approached in 
reference to his duty and obligation to 

the people, replied : "The public be ." 

Every man of wealth is directly or in- 
directly aided by the public, and to that 
public he is obligated. Were it not for 
the public, he could not be protected in 
the possession of it; and, secondly, his 
commodities, whether of brain or hand, 
require the supply and demand of the same 
public. This is not socialism, though there is 
some truth in socialism. But, as a system, 



John Ruskin 43 

socialism is not true. The teaching of Rus- 
kin on this point is simply plain Christianity ; 
't is getting back to Jesus. Herbert Spencer 
shows the weakness and the fallacy of 
socialism, as a system, in its inevitable tend- 
ency to level individuality. For this reason 
it can never become permanently effectual, 
and should not. In this sense humanity 
can never stand on a common plane. It 
would be like a snowfall on a quiet night; 
before another day it would be gathered 
into heaps again. Ruskin's teachings brings 
all genius to the altar of human-kind. Amid 
the criticisms, sharp and terrific, he chose 
between the two alternatives; ease and 
luxury on the one hand, and the unpopular 
cause of enslaved people on the other. In 
this hour he did not make pay in ecclesi- 
astical indorsement, nor did he bar up the 
flood-gates of the heart, but he himself be- 
came the living, acting, teaching incarna- 
tion of this sublime truth. 



44 John Ruskin 

This a busy, hurrying, breathless day. 
There is one thing sure, we are determined 
to live while we live. Morning and evening 
are bumpers! They are battledore and 
shuttlecock in the daily grind. Men will 
give ten dollars rather than ten minutes 
of time. Each day rains cares and hard 
knocks; competitions are distracting, often- 
times turned into a black art. So it was in 
Ruskin's day. He saw men chased hither 
and thither, trying to get "on,'' ravished by 
competitions, disappointed by growing 
selfishness, cast down because of failure, 
care-worn by approaching uncertainty. He 
said that lives so pressed and perplexed 
demand more leisure. Sand-heaps were 
crushing them; an enlarged outlook they 
could not have. An expanse of vision can 
only come with an expanse of time, leisure 
for meditation. Character, the great word 
in the unabriged dictionary of human life, 
is not made where the crowd passes by* 

:LcfCJ 



John Ruskin 45 

Business pressure and social deformities 
can only be escaped by flying to ourselves. 
More time, pleaded Ruskin, that men, 
women, and children miay have a chance to 
live in the higher lobes of their beings! 
The most impressive voice is that voice 
that calls apart. Leisure ! Leisure to touch 
varied nature, and see how God adorned 
the world and how he laid the sleepers; 
leisure to make excursions in green pas- 
tures and beside still waters; leisure that 
jaded limbs may relax and return with 
vigor; leisure that the fires of excitement 
may go down, and think a while on the 
couch of wisdom ; leisure to forget the tire- 
some insipidity of the multitudes, and to 
fly from the "ring around a rosy circle," 
and blind the eyes from the shining, swim- 
ming, simpering crowds; leisure to rescue 
self from decay, and be alone to delve in 
the storied nature of our soul! Ruskin's 
plea for leisure, and the monotony with 



46 John Ruskin 

which so many lives are burdened, reminds 
me sadly of an old woolen factory, marked 
with many hard years, and decayed, which 
stood near the home of my boyhood. 
Gone is the dam, the old mill-race, and 
the mill itself, with its many sunlight places 
and half-exposed ribs. But, closing the 
eye, I can see how the old scene of years 
ago. The old water-wheel is still there, 
hanging on its crooked axle, and the water 
is pouring in childish leaps and bounds 
over it. The old bent wheel moves round 
and round with a creak and rumble, filling 
the black, rusty buckets, and the empty 
ones, with their dusky mouths, are con- 
stantly returning to be refilled again, and so 
on and on, day and night, with idle and 
undying monotony. O the groveling life! 
Monotony dams it! Its only voice is the 
voice of the whistle. The ceaseless creak of 
the loom, and the listless rattle of machine, 
Ruskin argues, are the death sound of the 



John Ruskin 47 

workmen. Every lever, ratchet, screw, and 
belt are parts of a machine which should 
be man's emancipator. Invention ought to 
work towards freedom. Every improve- 
ment in mechanics should mean more 
leisure for the laborer. Outside of the hands 
of the higher purpose, Aaron's rod was a 
sapless and a dead thing, but, when in the 
divine grasp, it becomes a scepter of royal 
strength. So Ruskin's philosophy is that 
every invention must be the liberator of 
man, unstrapping the awful grind and bur- 
den of daily toil, and thereby allowing the 
laboring man more time for self-improve- 
ment. The gauge of personal worth is to 
that degree that the hours of leisure become 
solemn, impressive, and reflective. Such 
hours enrich desires, purify thoughts, exalt 
purposes, and signaHze victory for man. 

Ruskin lived in the pursuit of the ideal. 
The first impression is, as we look out 
upon the old world, all things seem fixed. 



48 John Ruskin 

But the second and third impressions are 
that nothing is fixed. Discontent is the law 
of all life. Every clod and pebble at our feet 
feels the stir of might. The tree, the bulb, 
the blade of grass are wrestling with forces 
unseen; they are trying to lose one life that 
they may find another. All things are 
striving to be other than what they are. 
The bud wants to realize itself in flower, 
and the acorn is struggling toward the oak. 
In our inner impulses we are all seeking 
the other self. There is a warfare between 
the actual and the potential, between the 
real and the ideal. The boy loses gun and 
dog, boat and rod, to become a man. May 
we let ourselves loose and lose ourselves. 
When we think properly, we pray; we are 
feeling our way after the vital source 
of things. We get a glimpse of the ideal, 
and our soul mounts after it. After all 
it is the germinal life of the oak that rends 
the acorn; ideals rend the human soul. 



John Ruskin 49 

Deep and serious is life, let there be a ten- 
sion between the subject and the object. 
Span the chasm, like unto some Paul Re- 
vere. Tennyson's ''Two Voices" instruct 
us — an inspiration there, rather than an 
ambition here. Reach after the ultimate 
limit, ''I am God's." We are ever conscious 
of our duality. Alcott says, ''The dual is 
in us." The plain devil is in us sometimes. 
Reality and ideality must reach after di- 
vine things. We turn them over and over, 
and we always find that the essential ele- 
ment of one is the essential element of the 
other ; what is fundamental in one is funda- 
mental in the other. It is more essential 
for a man to be a man than to be an Eng- 
lishman, Scotchman, or even an Irishman. 
One object is yellow, and another object 
is blue ; it is more essential for them to have 
color than that one is yellow and the other 
is blue. 

Ruskin's critics were life-shriveled, bent 
4 



50 John Ruskin 

cripples, who kick at everything that op- 
poses them; but, by virtue of this gravity, 
he could fly. Mean resistance made him 
possible. He could see. Almost anybody 
could see the cedars, but it took a Solomon 
to see the hyssop. It takes great big things, 
things of gigantic proportions, to move most 
of us, because we can't see. With most 
people it takes a whole flower-garden to 
move and touch them, but a simple daisy 
caused Burns to fall on his knees, and his 
soul burst into wondrous song. Linnaeus 
saw so much in one coarse, common flower 
that he wept in wondering praise. The 
earth-worm! O! out of the way with 
the nasty thing. Darwin, however, saw so 
much in this repelling creature that he 
wrote a whole volume about it. He really 
became the "poet laureate of the worm.'' 
What a eulogy you say? But it takes a 
big man to see the great and the magnificent 
in the commonplace. This is genius. 



John Ruskin 51 

Ruskin possessed it. To all of the littleness 
of his day he closed his eye. An artist does 
not sit down somewhere to paint a malarial 
bog, but he goes where some mountain is 
lifting itself out of some flowery area, or 
where its crags protrude themselves above 
the infinite depths of the ocean. Our 
prophet, from his mountain-minded vision, 
beheld those summits upon which humanity 
was to be unfolded in a justice and love, 
and God the one common Father of all. His 
moral excellence stands apart. It rises 
above his fellows like the glories of land 
and sea upon the horizon. He believed that 
we are God's children of infinite possi- 
bilities. He dreamed of that day when the 
Spirit of Christ would stir every breast. 
As Wyclif sounded the clarion note to 
which the advancing host of the English 
Reformation rallied, so Ruskin is the 
prophet and seer of modern democracy. 
Listen — 'Tiers Plowman" — the first great 



52 John Ruskin 

democratic song of English history! It is 
sounding the knell of feudalism, and de- 
claring the rights of man. Ruskin's note 
is keyed to the same song : 

"The owl he fareth well 

In the shadows of the night, 
And it puzzleth him to teU 

Why the eagle loves the light ; 
So he hooteth loud and long, 

But the eagle soars away, 
And on pinions swift and strong, 

Like a roused thought, sweeps away. " 

Ruskin's truth is the magical ideal of the 
kingdom of the Savior. Emerson says, 
*'The affirmative of affirmatives is love.'' 
Here is where humanity is to rest, and from 
this rock it is to build its glory. This one 
supreme Christ-truth is like the cathedral 
tower which throws into its shadow the 
storied walls beneath, and whose radiance 
gleams like the immense cross upon its 
summit. This is the choral melody to which 



John Ruskin 53 

the hearts of the world are to be attuned. 
It is coming! It is here! The Church of 
the Good Smaritan, the Church of "Abou 
Ben Adhem." Its creed and ritual are the 
beatitudes of the world's only Savior, and 
the Golden Rule of which he was the in- 
carnation. Its every message will be that 
sin is abject slavery, that bigotry is blood- 
less oppression, that narrowness is blinded 
tyranny, and that the way of Calvary is 
the only way to the Father, 



OCT 3 1902 



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